Liverpool owners open to selling minority stake in club

Bengaluru, Jan 25: Liverpool CEO Peter Moore has said owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG) are open to a minority sale that would raise funds. However, anything more than that is not an option at the moment, discarding the idea of selling the club in the near future.

Back in August 2018, some of the reports suggested that Abu Dhabi Prince Sheik Khaled Bin Zayed Al Nehayan, the cousin of Manchester City owner Sheik Mansour, had held talks regarding a potential takeover. The move, apparently, never even reached the vetting stage as their bid was deemed unseemly.

The £2billion offer would have been the most expensive takeover in the history of football but Liverpool denied the proposal directly.

Now, talking about the future of the side CEO Peter Moore has insisted that the club is surely open to adding more funds.

Since its £300m purchase of the club in October 2010, FSG has slowly but steadily injected a lot of money into the side. They invested £115m for the redevelopment of Anfield’s Main Stand and £50m to build a new training ground and their investment is now reflecting on the field.

Liverpool have been on an upward curve since hiring Jurgen Klopp three seasons back, playing back to back European final in the last two seasons. While they are favourite to win the Premier League title this term and it certainly has given them big boost in expanding their global brand.

The Red half of Merseyside recently announced two years of record kit sales while the signings of marquee stars like Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Sadio Mane and others have been cherry on the cake, expanding the brand value of the club.

They also generated 880 million viewers across all competitions – which is the highest among any Premier League team and looking at such growth, FSG will surely want to stick with the side to take the advantage of the club's recent success.

The Australian based owner, however, has now hinted that it could allow further investment in the side like Manchester City who sold 13 per cent of the City Football Group to Chinese investors back in 2015 for £265m.

"[The club] is not discourteous enough to discount people who say they are interested," Moore told Arabian Business.

"The club has made it very clear that if the right partner is interested in a minority stake, they would consider that."

In the interview, CEO Moore also addressed that the club is looking to expand its new kit deal with a major hike which could see the Reds stick with New Balance. However, the club this term expects it to bring in around £75M per season, £30M more than the current deal as they look to match up with Manchester United on the commercial side of things as well.

"It's an important part of our overall commercial make-up," Moore said. "Not only for the revenue it brings, but live-and-die soccer fans [care] about their kit manufacturer and designs as part of how they show themselves as fans.

"We think we are uniquely placed right now to build upon what we already have with New Balance... we think it's a great opportunity to build on our global distribution."